The Javanese are exceedingly superstitious. Their fears are easily excited by dreams and bad omens, and they are great believers in old women endowed with supernatural powers. * * * * * Sumatra is less advanced in civilization than Java, and is inhabited by various tribes of different origin. The Battas are an irritable and warlike tribe. They take as many wives as they please, and seldom have less than five or six. The women live in the same apartment with their husband; the room has no partitions, but each wife has a separate fireplace. As the bridegroom always makes a present of buffaloes, or horses, to the parents of the bride, daughters are considered a source of wealth. The women do all the work, while their husbands lounge in idleness, playing on the flute, with wreaths of globe-amaranth around their heads; or racing with each other, without saddle or stirrups, or hunting deer, or gambling away their wives, their children, and themselves. The Battas consider their wives and children as slaves, and sell them whenever they choose. An unfaithful wife has her hair cut off, and is sold for a slave; the paramour is killed and eaten by her husband’s tribe. On festival occasions, the girls wear gold pendants in their ears, and fasten their hair with golden pins, having heads in the shape of birds or dragons. They likewise give a beautiful polish to large shells, of which they make bracelets. Their dress covers the person modestly. More is known of the Redjangs than of any other tribe in Sumatra. They are a small, well-formed race, with deep olive complexion, and hair of shining blackness, owing partly to the cocoa-nut oil with which they constantly anoint it. The women are very proud of long hair, which they roll up tastefully on the crown of the head. They are fond of wearing garlands, which are generally composed of white, or light yellow, flowers. In some districts the girls wear fillets half an inch broad around their foreheads; the poor have them made of the leaves of the nipah-palm, but the rich wear silver and gold. The Redjangs have the absurd custom of stretching the ears, flattening the noses, and compressing the heads of new-born infants. They let the nails of the middle and little finger grow to an extraordinary length. The tips of the fingers are stained with the red juice of henna; and it is singular that their hands are always cold to the touch. Their common garments are generally made of the bark of the paper-mulberry tree, prepared in a manner similar to Otaheite cloth.